The Dark Streets of Rome

[Aetius]

At around midnight Senators Pansa and Nerva accompanied by their bodyguards left the upscale bar on the Aventine, somewhat drunk and belligerent. At once they begun to argue on what to do next, Nerva said he knew of a scandalous party, but Pansa had other ideas;

"Well that party will likely cost a fortune to get into Nerva...and I am not as rich as I would like to be due to the bloody poor in this wretched city!


...Speaking of which, I have a delinquint tenant in one of the apartments I own on the Caelian, we should rustle up the missing payments so we can afford more of the finer things in life! What do you say about that idea?"

[Paul d]

"I suppose so, if you get it done quickly. We've still got that party to go to, remember? Although I don't really like the idea of roughing up some poor folks just for a few coin. Seems kind of thuggish, you know? How long have they been past due? Maybe we could just work out a deal with them. I mean, it's not like they'd try to rip you off, knowing what you could do to them."

Nerva, a politically idealistic man who claimed to vouch for the poor, had no real experience with them. While he believed that the poor were genuinely disadvantaged and were exploited by...well, most of the people he knew personally, he really had no understanding of what kind of work they did, what they did in their spare time (if they even had any?), or what their lives at home were like. For all he knew, they were people who were chronically without money or property and continually exploited, and he wished it wouldn't be that way.

"Anyway, I haven't really been in that part of the city for a long time now. We might as well go."